East Brighton Health Hub: Creating Change and Empowering Communities
World Health Day on April 7th provides the opportunity for communities, organisations and governments to work together to advocate for actions that can improve people’s health and wellbeing.
It also marks the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organisation in 1948.
Earlier this year, East Brighton Trust visited East Brighton Health Hub at Robert Lodge Community Space in Whitehawk and met with their growing and dedicated team of community health and wellbeing professionals from the nine local GP practices that make up the East & Central Brighton Primary Care Network.
To celebrate World Health Day, it felt like a good opportunity to once again shine a light on this outstanding project that was born from community conversations, collaborative work with TDC and forward-thinking PCN clinical leads.
People face many challenges in East Brighton with wider determinants of health such as social isolation, food poverty and unsuitable housing.
The health hub’s had a profound impact locally with nearly 400 people visiting since they opened their doors last September, with each person seeing at least one health practitioner.
It was inspiring to hear from project leads Oonagh O’Brien and Joe Walker about how things have evolved.
Oonagh’s background is in community development:
“We’ve got the clinical staff and put a the system in place to help people flow through the service, and we are now inviting more third sector professionals into the space, which includes Money Advice Plus, TDC, the Alzheimer’s Society, and many more.”
“There are still substantial mental health support needs in East Brighton.”
“We are helping to meet the need, and we also have Southdown, who can give more advice about additional mental health services.”
“We’re providing the opportunity for people to engage with as many professionals as they need to.”
“I’m passionate about statutory and third sector organisations working together with the communities they serve, as it is the most effective and efficient way of delivering services.”
Joe’s background is in public health. He knows only too well about areas of deprivation facing the worst health inequalities, compounded by difficulties in accessing healthcare and barriers to accessing GP appointments.
“Social and structural factors make such a difference to people’s health, for example housing and finances. We want to make it easier for people to access support for things like this, as well as traditional clinical interventions.”
“The health hub’s about demedicalising healthcare – for some, there is a lot of anxiety and trauma around going to GP surgeries.”
“The unique selling point here is that people who come to the hub can see many health and third sector professionals over one to two hours – that could be four GP referrals and waiting lists, and patients are seeing everyone in a morning, empowering patients to unpick some of the problems they might have.”
Another update at the East Brighton Health Hub is the afternoon events that are now taking place. Oonagh and Joe spoke about what’s been happening at Robert Lodge.
“The Patient Engagement Team working alongside pharmacy delivered a ‘Healthy Heart’ event inviting the council’s Healthy Lifestyles Team and Glogi, the weight management provider. On the day people had blood pressure checks, information on medication as well as lots of help and advice on changing lifestyles. It was a successful day in that people left reassured and informed on what they could do to help themselves.”
Oonagh and Joe are looking at arranging more targeted, cohort specific events – they can see the benefits.
Speaking about the future, Joe highlighted the benefits of group consultations: “Opportunities for people with the same chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, where they can come together, means that people can support one another, and there’s the chance to talk about the risk factors when conditions aren’t managed, within a group.”
Oonagh also spoke about the future of the health hub: “The hope is to continue to widen the offer by partnering with more services that help people address issues affecting their health and wellbeing,”
“We’re working towards a regular offer from Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust to help widen our clinical offer along with other services like housing and social care.”
“Our next step is to implement the MSK (Musculoskeletal) “passport” model, where patients are booked in and taken on a person-centred journey, and have a place to write down all the information and advice they receive along the way.”
“They walk out with an action plan that empowers them to take control of their health and wellbeing.”
You can read more about East Brighton Health Hub here and read our original blog again here.